What is the Dream?

[M. J. Young]

That's what I get for taking Saturday's off, particularly when I finish early on Friday.

Someone messaged me and asked if I could throw any light on this mess; I seem to have emerged as one of the defenders of simulationism, and I hope I can help here.

The first note that I've made to myself pertains to John's suggestion that Narrativism fully contains The Dream plus something else, and that this leads to the conflict that either Narrativism doesn't fully contain the dream or Simulationism has nothing that Narrativism lacks. This overlooks the problem inherent in opportunity costs--an essential economics concept that states, as I'm sure you know, that each individual has only so much capital, and any investment he makes in X represents capital he cannot invest in Y. Thus the dream in narrativism (and in gamism, for that matter) is, or can be, fully consistent and adequately realized, but part of the focus has been shifted to the narrativist (or gamist) priority, and to the degree that we have moved the focus to this, we have reduced our ability to address the Dream itself.

The first time I read Perelandra, back in college, I was starting to get bored with the long descriptions of the oceans, the floating islands, the color of the skies, the total darkness at night, the strange plants--I had never had trouble sticking with a C. S. Lewis book before, and frankly if this had been the first I'd ever read (and it wasn't a course assignment) I don't know that I'd have finished it, or picked up another. I went back to it a couple years ago (twenty some years later) and was absolutely enraptured by the scene he painted, a world I am so dying to convert to game play, because it is so utterly different and fascinating.

My complaint in college was that nothing was happening in those chapters; it was all setting and color. There was no theme, and there was no action. Yet looking at it now, I can see that Lewis could have given us an adequate idea of Perelandra in a few pages, and gotten on with the moral story he was going to tell, and moved more quickly through it to the action sequence that forges the climax--but it would have meant that we had a much poorer image of that world.

So, too, in role play, to the degree that we are focusing our attention on premise or challenge, we are taking it off the dream; and in so doing, we are saying that the dream is less important, need not be so rich or detailed.

John might object that his game prep is very detailed; but that doesn't make the play simulationist. Yes, all that detail is there, behind the story--but do the players really attend to it? That feels to me more like he is prepared to reveal whatever they discover, but that there may be reams of material they will never know. If premise and challenge don't get in the way, they will know more of the dream. If they turn to premise or challenge, the part of the dream they know will remain coherent, but it will be less rich. It has to be, because time is finite and information transmission rates are finite, and any of these resources that are diverted to gamist or narrativist priorities are diverted from the dream.

The Beeg Horseshoe theory is very tempting; but it seriously misses this. It assumes that simulationist players are actively trying to avoid gamist or narrativist tendencies, when in fact simulationist players are actively trying to explore the dream, and are so overwhelmed by it that, at least for the moment, they aren't interested in gamist or narrativist priorities. Some people will give up sex for food, and some will give up food for sex, and some will give up both for money. Most recognize that it's difficult to get all three at once, and to the degree that they pursue one they're ignoring the other two.

I agree with John that the desire to discover can be very emotional; I agree with Jason that it can be very detached. Both are simulationist, in the same way that a friendly game of chess and an international competition between grand masters are both gamist.

One of the problems with most examples of simulationism is that many simulationist games drift; a corresponding problem is that most narrativist and gamist games look like simulationism when they aren't addressing their agendae directly. I think that the Water Uphill game is an example of one of these, but I'm not sure which one. At one time, I thought it was simulationism transitioning to narrativism when situation was introduced; then I came to think (as I am now inclined) that it was completely narrativist, a setting in which were situations geared to trigger play addressing premise, but that when those situations were resolved and there was no immediate premise to address (or no immediate way to address a premise) the system fell back to exploration. I'll say more on this in a moment, I think, because I want to address Jason's seven points, and one of them lands here.

I don't know that Threefold preference is particularly relevant to Creative Agenda. Simulationism appears to be most focused on in-game consistency and causality, which can be CA simulationist in a simulationist setup, but it can be narrativist in a front-loaded narrativist setting, and it can be gamist in a front-loaded gamist setting. To use a gamist illustration, if I, the referee, tell you that you, the player character playing yourself, wash up on the shore of a tropical island and are taken in by the host, who then at dinner a few days later announces that to repay him for his kindness in helping you survive, you are going to serve as prey for his hunting expedition starting tomorrow morning and lasting three days, it is perfectly in-game for you to decide you're going to beat this guy at his own game--and absolutely gamist play, if you as player take it as a personal test of your ability. Although Creative Agenda is built on the foundation that was Threefold, John has made it fairly clear that Threefold is about techniques directly; CA is about priorities, with techniques impacting only to the degree that they support priorities.

O.K., time to deal with Jason's seven points.

1) Theme does not damage the dream, in fact the dream supports theme.

Yes, but as established above, theme limits the dream through opportunity costs.

2) GNS looks at an instance of play.
Isn't anything to argue here.

Of course, we can argue about what constitutes and "instance"; at the moment we won't.

3) Creative agendae are exclusive priorities.
GNS priorities are each exclusive, because they can conflict. Again, not much to argue - this is how GNS works.

Ah, but they can conflict in multiple ways. In essence, they conflict through opportunity costs in all cases, but sometimes also through overall direction--that is, we can have the greater conflict that pursuing the address of premise at this moment means we are acting in a manner that clearly frustrates gamist goals; but we can also have the lesser conflict that our decision to pursue the premise at this moment means we're not going to get to the gamist goals tonight, and maybe not next time either, because we're going the wrong way. So, too, gamist and narrativist agendae can conflict with a simulationist agenda by taking time and attention away from that part of play and putting it somewhere else. More clearly, simulationist play can directly conflict with gamist and narrativist priorities when the player decides he doesn't want to go there, and goes somewhere else instead.

Let me pull out a Multiverser example. I was test-running Orc Rising, a setting rife with moral difficulties. The short version is that it's a post-fantasy world in which magic is fading and pre-gunpowder lifestyles are on the rise among elves, dwarfs, and men; these "free peoples" are destroying the jungles in which the orcs live in primitive tribes, and are enslaving the orcs they capture, because that's "better for the orcs" than living their primitive lives in the jungles (we give them the benefits of civilization, a work ethic, better living conditions, longer lives, and some of our advanced knowledge). I can drop people in this world and they turn it into a narrativist issue-driven game in minutes. However, the first player I brought there made a game of exploring how the men and elves and dwarfs were building their worlds, how the economies worked, how they traded with each other--he skirted the moral issues almost completely, getting no deeper than to buy himself a slave, inform the orc that he should consider himself free, but probably should stay with him so that there wouldn't be any questions about his status. Had there been other people in the same world at the same time, his avoidance of the moral issues could have led to dysfunctional play, because prioritizing the exploration of the world creates the opportunity cost that you have less to invest in the exploration of the premise (and conversely because prioritizing the exploration of the premise prevents you from being able to dig as deeply into the world, given the same amount of time).

4) Hybrid Sim play exists.

This is very controversial, and it has not been demonstrated.

As I suggested above, when narrativist play is not immediately addressing theme, it defaults to quiet exploration; when gamist play is not immediately addressing challenge, it defaults to quiet exploration. The error is to think that this means it has become simulationist play. The error is to think that consistency in the dream is necessarily simulationist. It isn't. It is an element of exploration, and is a foundational necessity for all modes. (Even in those cases in which the dream changes arbitrarily, this itself is the consistency: the rule is there is no rule. We must know the degree to which the world will be consistent to play in any mode. Even simulationism can play in a constantly changing unstable world; it then becomes an exploration of that which is unstable.)

No one has yet demonstrated a game in which G is subordinate to N but above S; or G is above N which is in turn above S. I think this is because the notion of hybrid is illusory, at least at this point. People don't really "fall back on simulationism" as a second mode. They maintain consistent exploration, looking for opportunities to address their CA once again, possibly preparing for these.

If they were truly prioritizing simulationism, then when narrativist or gamist opportunities arose, they would ignore these in favor of simulationism. If a player ignores gamist opportunities but pursues narrativist ones, that doesn't mean he's playing nar with a sim secondary; it means he's not interested in gamism, and is marking time looking for narrativist opportunities.

The hybrid play notion is at this point a red herring. No one has really demonstrated that it exists (TRoS notwithstanding) as an approach to play (game design that supports multiple agendae does not demonstrate multiple agendae in play).

5) Sim's metagame agenda is verisimilitude.

You're right to question this one, because it's not really true. Sim's metagame agenda is discovery*; verisimilitude is a necessary factor for discovery to have meaning.

6) Sim exists as a creative agenda.
This is in conflict with #5. As agenda are exclusive, this leaves Sim without a metagame agenda it can call its own, and hence nothing to define it. This is supported by #3, and the conclusion in #4.

Since I've shown that #5 is incorrect, #6 no longer conflicts with it. The sim creative agenda is the pursuit of knowledge; that is its metagame. It is most easily pursued in a system that is internally consistent. #3 does support it, even as qualified above; I've rejected #4 because I don't believe that hybrid play exists (even if hybrid design does), so it is irrelevant.

7) Causality can create Nar play.
The unintentional thing we keep getting hung up on - supported by #1 which states that you needn't prioritize theme over the dream for the dream to hold. #5 is also in conflict with this, but as this seems to be a sticky spot I'm simply making a note about it. This isn't necessary to the point.

Yes, causality can create narrativist play. I don't think #5 is in conflict once it's been re-examined. You don't need to prioritize anything in order for the dream to be present; you need to prioritize the dream for its own sake to be truly doing simulationism, because you're after an understanding of the dream itself.

One problem that it has taken me a while to realize is that setting, system, color, situation, and character are so thoroughly intertwined that each of them must be considered part of each of them. That's important, because we otherwise get confused into thinking that this "system" is simulationist, and it doesn't matter what we do with it because it will continue to encourage simulationist play. The thing is, as soon as you place premise-ridden characters or premise-rich settings or premise-loaded situations into this, they become part of the system, and suddenly the system contains the address of premise as part of itself. If the players pursue that, you've got narrativist play arising entirely from within the structure of the game; if they ignore it (as my Orc Rising player did), and go for exploring non-premise aspects of the structure, you've got simulationism, demonstrated by a prioritization of discovery of whatever there is to discover.

I hope this helps.

*Discovery might not be the perfect word, since arguably the exploration of premise is a road to discovery, and even gamist play can be about discovery. I thought of enlightenment, but that seems to have even more narrativist implications. Simulationism is about knowledge and understanding. Discovery seems the best word for this.

--M. J. Young

[Ian Charvill]

A brief note - I don't have time to contribute fully at the moment, which I regret, it's an important thread I feel - I heartily concur with M.J's points.  Especially his latching onto opportunity cost as an important issue, I'm kicking myself for not employing that one.

Also a note on usage: agenda is already a plural - of agendum.  Agendae has no foundation at all and is not good usage.  I would venture to say that aganda is typically treated as singular in modern English, and so there is no great sin in pluralising it though: just use the standard English -s addition for plurals though: hence agendas.

Carry on.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi M.J.,

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

(Re: C. S. Lewis' Perelandra)

My complaint in college was that nothing was happening in those chapters; it was all setting and color. There was no theme, and there was no action. Yet looking at it now, I can see that Lewis could have given us an adequate idea of Perelandra in a few pages, and gotten on with the moral story he was going to tell, and moved more quickly through it to the action sequence that forges the climax--but it would have meant that we had a much poorer image of that world.

So, too, in role play, to the degree that we are focusing our attention on premise or challenge, we are taking it off the dream; and in so doing, we are saying that the dream is less important, need not be so rich or detailed.  

I just wanted to point out that this is nearly the same as what I suggested in the thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9197">Writing Style, Detail, and Simulationism.  I didn't mention Perelandra, but I cited works like Melville's Moby Dick -- which also has many complete chapters with no action, and just description of whaling life.  Now, there was disagreement about how far the analogy goes.  Most people (like Mike Holmes, Gordon, and Vincent) seemed to agree that there is some relation, but that no author is actually Simulationist.  

John might object that his game prep is very detailed; but that doesn't make the play simulationist. Yes, all that detail is there, behind the story--but do the players really attend to it? That feels to me more like he is prepared to reveal whatever they discover, but that there may be reams of material they will never know. If premise and challenge don't get in the way, they will know more of the dream.  If they turn to premise or challenge, the part of the dream they know will remain coherent, but it will be less rich.  

It's hard to say exactly what level of detail we're talking about, but I think Gordon (who played with my group in our http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7297">Shadows in the Fog playtest) can back me up in saying that the detail tends to be pretty dense in our group.  Tor and Gordon were of the opinion that that was overall GNS Simulationist.  I would add that it was pretty representative of the sort of detail that happens in our Vinland game.  

For example, last session featured a journey to the spirit world where the members of the Brygjafael clan were trying to win the acceptance of the mustang spirit for it to become their clan totem.  We spent a while establishing the details of the ritual.  We played out an extended family discussion about who would take part in the ritual.  I then tried to cover the ritual itself.  For example, I originally said that they didn't have any hallucinogens per se.  Someone argued that they would have some sort of hallucinogen such as mushrooms.  We discussed it for a few minutes, I think.  Now, this was a little jarring to discuss but at the same time I felt it was important to establish this one way or the other.  

So later we had established that everyone was fasting, smoking, and singing in the sauna room for over a day.  As people started to get delirious, there was an impromptu contest between men and women, started by a spat between two younger cousins.  The contest was that everyone ran from the sauna to jump into an ice-hole.  As this was happening, Liz looked up hypothermia online with her laptop (which has a wireless connection).  Meanwhile, though, I winged it and said that everyone should make CON x 2 tests to see whether they can get out of the ice hole without help.  We rolled for all the people involved (8 NPCs and 3 PCs).  After everyone came back from that they fell into trances and we went into the vision quest where they were tested by the mustang totem (after a break as Liz and I put our son Milo to bed.)  

So is this all detail for detail's sake with no interest or emotion?  I don't think so.  And yet, having someone look up hypothermia online during play is a pretty striking feature of the game IMO.  Gordon played in the SitF playtest, and I think that similar use of detail in that session influenced his impression that it was overall GNS Simulationist.  I'm not saying that Vinland can't be Narrativist, but that there are very important differences between this RuneQuest-variant campaign and, say, games like The Pool or Primetime Adventures.

[Jason Lee]

As always, M.J.'s full of insight.  Rather than address the whole post, I'm just going to hit the points of disagreement.  I'm also not going to bother plugging my counter-points back into the original seven points, at least not until there is a consensus of some sort - that'd be a big waste of time.  Seems a shame to hack up such a nice post into smaller, non-contiguous chunks, but...

*****

The first note that I've made to myself pertains to John's suggestion that Narrativism fully contains The Dream plus something else, and that this leads to the conflict that either Narrativism doesn't fully contain the dream or Simulationism has nothing that Narrativism lacks. This overlooks the problem inherent in opportunity costs--an essential economics concept that states, as I'm sure you know, that each individual has only so much capital, and any investment he makes in X represents capital he cannot invest in Y. Thus the dream in narrativism (and in gamism, for that matter) is, or can be, fully consistent and adequately realized, but part of the focus has been shifted to the narrativist (or gamist) priority, and to the degree that we have moved the focus to this, we have reduced our ability to address the Dream itself.

One problem that it has taken me a while to realize is that setting, system, color, situation, and character are so thoroughly intertwined that each of them must be considered part of each of them. That's important, because we otherwise get confused into thinking that this "system" is simulationist, and it doesn't matter what we do with it because it will continue to encourage simulationist play. The thing is, as soon as you place premise-ridden characters or premise-rich settings or premise-loaded situations into this, they become part of the system, and suddenly the system contains the address of premise as part of itself. If the players pursue that, you've got narrativist play arising entirely from within the structure of the game; if they ignore it (as my Orc Rising player did), and go for exploring non-premise aspects of the structure, you've got simulationism, demonstrated by a prioritization of discovery of whatever there is to discover.

Why those two quotes?  Well, I'm in agreement with the second one, except for maybe the conclusion about Sim (based on where I'm going with this).  The second quote is basically where I'm starting from to disagree with the whole concept of opportunity costs as being applicable.

The entanglement of exploration elements extends to theme.  Now I'm going to quote myself from (out of laziness, I suppose):  Writing Style, Detail, and Simulationism.

My theme is 'What is freedom worth?" And blammo! I've got character, setting, and situation. I've got a setting where oppression exists, a character suffering from oppression, and a chance to break free from it (or whatever, examples only). Not everything I need to play, but once I'm playing System and Color show up. It goes in reverse: One slave (Character), One society with slavery (Setting), a chance to run for it (Situation), and I've got myself the theme.

So I've got theme, but not Nar yet. What I need to do to get Nar is address this in play, which occurs if I remain committed to he explored elements that comprise the theme. 'Cause the explored elements and theme are the same thing, we just put 'em in different little boxes for analysis. Remain consistent with the explored elements that initially created the theme, and you continue to address the theme. Continuing to address the theme means remaining committed to the explored elements it was spawned from (in one fashion or another).

So my conclusion is that the Nar agenda is a structure of explored elements, not an extra something added after the explored elements.  There is no opportunity cost here, because a player is as committed to exploration as he's willing to be regardless.  The difference lies in the shape of the exploration, not the intensity.

So, a couples holes I see here are: Could not Sim have its own unique structure, one of discovery?
To that I would say:  it is the lack of structure that defines Sim play; Sim's options are open.  The discovery itself is not a structure - it's what's happening, not how it's happening.  So, no Sim does not have a structure.  However, even if discovery is a structure this doesn't seem to harm my statements about opportunity costs, but is instead a question of Sim's metagame agenda.

Also:  What is meant by structure?  
Common elements that point to an agenda.

*****

We seem to be in agreement on hybrid play, as we both deny its existence.  And I take your point here:

Since I've shown that #5 is incorrect, #6 no longer conflicts with it. The sim creative agenda is the pursuit of knowledge; that is its metagame. It is most easily pursued in a system that is internally consistent. #3 does support it, even as qualified above; I've rejected #4 because I don't believe that hybrid play exists (even if hybrid design does), so it is irrelevant.

about it being irrelevant.

However, the rejection of hybrid play is very counter to what I thought was accepted theory.  Because I just have to know, I'm going to address this question directly to Ron:

Does Sim hybrid play exist?

*****

5) Sim's metagame agenda is verisimilitude.

You're right to question this one, because it's not really true. Sim's metagame agenda is discovery*; verisimilitude is a necessary factor for discovery to have meaning.

...

*Discovery might not be the perfect word, since arguably the exploration of premise is a road to discovery, and even gamist play can be about discovery. I thought of enlightenment, but that seems to have even more narrativist implications. Simulationism is about knowledge and understanding. Discovery seems the best word for this.

I'm going to try to avoid quibbling over the word usage.  Suffice it to say that we start with the assumption that Sim has something for a meta-game agenda.  My question is, is this something unique to Sim?  Or is it present in Nar, even if it is 'quieter'?  If so, I think the inconsistencies that spring from point five remain.

*****

Just because I feel like a clarifier is in order before it becomes an issue: My purpose is not to disprove the existence of Sim play.  My purpose is to point out how the points from the beginning of the thread disprove Sim's place in the Creative Agenda layer.  Well, actually I suppose my purpose is to figure all this crap out, but that's more of my 'always purpose'.

****

I hope this helps.

Of course it does!

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Jason, I have a couple of responses.

1. I have no objection whatsoever to your phrasing of the "structure of the explored elements" over the "add-on to the explored elements." I consider that a phrasing that suits your personal sensations and lacking any particular necess

Or to put it differently, I am making no specific claims about the relationship between Creative Agenda and Exploration that you're disputing. My only claim is that one cannot "do" Exploration, in the sense of actually role-playing together, without having a Creative Agenda at all.

2. You ask whether Simulationist hybrid play exists.

I'm going to dispute, first and foremost, that I am the ultimate authority for this or any related issue. I am only the authority over what I'm trying to say, not over How Things Really Are.

Therefore the question I'm going to answer is, "Ron, what do you think about Simulationist hybrid play?" With full acknowledgment that someone else's take on it, M.J.'s or whoever's, may well be a better take.

Here's an excerpt from the upcoming Narrativist essay, which is just an ace away from being done as we speak. To orient you, this follows just after a discussion of the N-S "blend," which I claim is merely Narrativist play and not a shred of Simulationist at all. Then,

... what about subordinate hybrids? Simulationist play may be a functional underpinning to Narrativist play, insofar as bits or sub-scenes of play can shift into extensive set-up or reinforcers for upcoming Bang-oriented moments. Such scenes or details can take on an interest of their own, as with the many pages describing military hardware in a Tom Clancy novel. It's a bit risky, as one can attract (e.g.) hardware-nuts who care very little for Premise as well as Premise-nuts who get bored by one too many hardware-pages, and end up pleasing neither enough to attract them further.

Historically, this approach has been poorly implemented in role-playing texts, which swing into Simulationist phrasing extremely easily, for the reasons I describe in Simulationism: the Right to Dream. You cannot get emergent Narrativist play specifically through putting more and more effort into perfecting the Simulationism, no matter how "genre-faithful" or "character-faithful" it may be. I consider most efforts in this direction to become reasonably successful High-Concept Simulationism with a strong slant toward Situation, mainly useful for enjoyable pastiche but not particularly for Narrativist play at all.

The key issue is System. Narrativist play is best understood as a powerful integration and feedback between character creation and the reward system, however they may work, in that the former is merely the first step of the latter in terms of addressing Premise. Whereas the usual effect in High-Concept Simulationist play is to "fix" player-characters appropriately into the Situation for purposes of affirming the story-as-conceived, especially in terms of varying effectiveness at specific task-categories, and reward systems in these games are usually diminished and delayed to the point of absence. Games which stumbled over this issue include Fading Suns and Legend of the Five Rings, both of which require extensive Drifting to achieve even halting Narrativist play despite considerable thematic content.

The more successful primarily-Narrativist, secondarily-Simulationist hybrid designs include Obsidian, to some extent, possibly Continuum if I'm reading it right, and The Riddle of Steel as the current shining light; I also call attention to Robots & Rapiers, currently in development.

[note: TROS play does tend to include distinct Drift toward either less-S-detours or throw-out-N-stuff versions, as you can see in the relevant forum.]

How about the reverse? Can Narrativist play underlie and reinforce a primarily Simulationist approach? I consider this to be a very interesting question, because it's not like Gamism in this regard at all. What happens when Premise is addressed sporadically, or develops so slowly that the majority of play is like those hardware-pages? Whether this is "slow Narrativism" or "S-N-S" or just plain dysfunctional play is a matter of specific instances, I think. But I do want to stress that it's not the "N/S blend" as commonly construed, which is to say, both priorities firing as equal pals.

Best,
Ron

[Jason Lee]

Or to put it differently, I am making no specific claims about the relationship between Creative Agenda and Exploration that you're disputing. My only claim is that one cannot "do" Exploration, in the sense of actually role-playing together, without having a Creative Agenda at all.

Ah.  It seems to me that you cannot 'do' Exploration because 'doing' is how Creative Agenda is defined.  You can't really argue with ground-rules, lucky for me you don't have to agree with them either ;).  This is most likely an impasse based on differences in perception, or a perceived subtly that doesn't really exist (from one side or the other).  Though what I'm proposing does conflict with the ground-rules, the Beeg Horseshoe does not appear to (because it treats Sim differently without removing it from CA).

I'm going to dispute, first and foremost, that I am the ultimate authority for this or any related issue. I am only the authority over what I'm trying to say, not over How Things Really Are.

[snip]

Heh, sorry.  Didn't mean it to come off that way - I was just being direct.  Better phrasing would have been, "Ron, I specifically remember you believing in hybrid play, is this true?"  Then maybe the bold letters wouldn't have seemed so much like 'Fine!  I'm asking daddy!' (They were meant to catch post skimming.)

Anyway, I'm wandering... (Fascinating though it is to figure out where communication breaks down.)

Thanks, curiosity satisfied.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hmm.. MJ's post gives food for thought. Some table scraps:

I am reminded on the thread Sim Essay: reading the book is the start of play?
What brings this up are some of the examples brought up such as Perelandra, Moby Dick, etc. I confess to enjoying the fiction of Michael Crichton who also tends to provide passages of info-dumping. And I do enjoy these nuggets. I have notice two types of these portions of what Jared Sorensen might call "info-dumping"
[list=1][*]Passages which contain information about the setting, either daily life sort of things or an otherwise (hopefully) interesting bit. This bit of information has little or anything to do with the plot at large. The item described is not encountered by the protagonist and the influence of this item effects the character by six degrees of separation. As a minor example, in the Hobbit, Tolkien notes that the King of Eagles eventually becomes the King of all bird, but Bilbo never sees him again. That is, that the King of Eagles eventually gets a promotion is neither here nor there for the story of Bilbo Baggin tagging along with a group of Dwarves, but Tolkien notes it anyway.[*]The second type is very much like type 1. but it is necessary to the plot. Ideally, any such exposition will be woven into the story itself so it's not a large block of text that can be readily identified as such. However, sometimes this is unavoidable if the factoid is a little involved. To keep the audience from being confused about what's going on, it maybe simple be necessary. Example: in Crichton's Great Train Robbery, the characters needed to get copies of the keys to the safe. One of the possessors of one said key came down with a venerial disease. For the reader to understand the events, Crichton had to explain a myth in Victorian society that having intercourse with a virgin would either relief the symptoms of, or cure venerial disease. Without this passage, then the reason why the protagonist setting the fellow up with a virgin makes no sense.* [/list:o]

But what I'm thinking about here is that in either case, the passage has a similar flavor as an encyclopedia entry, regardless of writing style. Which is pretty much like the setting section or worldbook of an RPG.

So, if reading the book can be part of Sim play. What goes on at the table?

I suppose that it is a matter of what the players want, right?


* Interesting aside. I had met one person who had read Critchon's Great Train Robbery. He dismissed it as being mostly about how men in Victorian England would have sex with virgins to cure venerial diseases. That's like saying the movie Silence of the Lambs is about a guy who tucks his penis between his legs so that he looks female.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

John, can you provide some focus for this thread?

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

OK, so the initial impetus for this thread was the essential contradiction: if Narrativism supports "The Dream" just as well as Simulationism, then what is Simulationism for?  If the former tenet is true, then it questions what "The Dream" is and whether Simulationism is really pursuing it.  

Now, MJ's post suggested that there was "opportunity cost" for Narrativism, and that by spending opportunities on theme instead of world, Simulationism will have more deeply realized elements like setting, character, and so forth -- even if Narrativism maintains "adequate" consistency.  Jack seems to be suggesting similar -- that Simulationism will have long exposition-like blocks of detail which may not have anything to do with the story.  

I am not very satisfied with this.  It makes Sim-vs-Nar into a sliding scale of how much detail you would like.  However, outside of RPGs many stories have much more detail than is necessary to understand the plot  (like Perelandra, Moby Dick, and Lord of the Rings.)  

So I don't have an answer for my initial contradiction, but I am not satisfied with the one presented.  

------

SIDE NOTE:  It occurs to me that there is a bias against detail from starting with Egri's work on Dramatic Writing.  Playwriting or screenwriting is different than novels, because the playwright skips a lot of detail.  That detail is added in later by the actors, costumers, production designers, and so forth who take the screenplay and generate lots of detail (sets, movement, expressions, etc.) to surround the raw lines.  Thus, for dramatic writing Egri suggests cutting out detail that doesn't directly address premise.  But I've now read his later book on Creative Writing, and interestingly he makes much less about premise and more about character in that.

[Ian Charvill]

John

I wouldn't think of it as extra detail, I'd think of it as extra stuff.

It's like the excision of Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Wights from the film of The Fellowship of the Ring.  They're entire episodes that we've had to miss because we were spending the limited amount of screen time on something else.  Without a central driving thematic concern, you're free to have side episodes like this with the only criterion being is everyone having fun?

It's not that we're free to spend half-an-hour having a conversation with Mr Cuttymeat the butcher - rather than the ten minute premise driven one - it's that were free to have ten minute conversations with Mr Cuttymeat, Mr Doughneeder and Mr Waxshaper.  I mean, you could have the half hour conversation, it's whatever floats your boat.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi,

John touched on an idea I've been nudging forward for a while.  Ian just illustrated it again.

It's this: Ron, through Egri, built narrativism off the bones of dramatic narrative (play, movies).  A lot of people use "stories" as examples of what they're talking about, and use examples from movies/plays and novels interchangebly.  I don't think this can be done.

Though all these forms of storytelling produce stories, they are wildly different in their concerns as *forms*.  There's a lot more breathing space in a novel, and thus a lot more room to "dream."

I suspect that when people talk about "long campaigns, you know, like Lord o the Rings," there's a dirrect connection between the sim desire of the campaign with a desire to be back in that feeling of wallowing in a novel.  Where as narrativism, as Ron's defined it, and a lot of the techniques support it, are drawn from the traditions of dramatic narrative.

(Covering my ass time (but I think it's true): when folks with Nar priorities use books or prose fiction as examples, check out what they're doing: almost invariably they're picking the parts a screenwriter would most likely keep as an adaptation to the screen.)

So, I think there's a difference in terms of *what kinds* of details one can afford to have in different media.  I'd say "the dream" is much more novelistic in the details.  The Novel, for example, as it was once known, explored society -- and as much of the different social strata as the author wished.  Which meant it could go all over the place.  Details about doilies were often the norm.  Dramatic narrative needs to keep moving and needs to be much more tightly focused.  The details are fewer.  

I type all this to offer to everyone using books and movies and plays as examples of the "dream" that's inherent in all stories: be aware that the nature of the dream varies on the nature of the media.  And, in closing, that these different expectations of different media affect what sorts of details and "dream" different players will bring to the table.

Christopher

PS

(For illustrations of this conflict of how much "dream" is dream enough (or not enough), check out the Aint It Cool News Lord of the Ring Wars.  There you will find the people who wanted their "deam" experience of reading the trilogy to be recreated on the screen, and the people who really wanted the "dream" experience a great movie can offer, argue it out over how the movies failed (because they weren't the dream of the book) or succeeded (because they are a movie lover's dream.)

[Gordon C. Landis]

I'll remind Christopher of his valuable insights in this thread about Film vs. Novel as N-model, and suggest that issue go in a new thread if we want to discuss it.

Another post about the two-point controversy in just a bit . . .

Gordon

[Gordon C. Landis]

OK, here's a long post - I think it is all/mostly focused on John's issue with "what is it that Sim does that Nar does not?"  I think that *is* more than just the opportunity cost/addition-by-subtraction others have alluded to, and I think the Nar essay may help show that, but until then - Let me start by building a bit on MJ's excellent (to my eye) analysis:

John might object that his game prep is very detailed; but that doesn't make the play simulationist. Yes, all that detail is there, behind the story--but do the players really attend to it?

I added emphasis to "really" because both G and N can and will attend to detail.  "Really", in GNS terms, asks if the point of this whole thing (as demonstrated during play) is all about "it" (and yes, I'll revisit the question of what "it" is in just a bit).

I see MJ as fully in agreement with that - I just wanted to emphasize it even more.  When he says . . heck, let me go ahead and quote again a bit others have quoted

The thing is, as soon as you place premise-ridden characters or premise-rich settings or premise-loaded situations into this, they become part of the system, and suddenly the system contains the address of premise as part of itself. If the players pursue that, you've got narrativist play arising entirely from within the structure of the game; if they ignore it (as my Orc Rising player did), and go for exploring non-premise aspects of the structure, you've got simulationism, demonstrated by a prioritization of discovery of whatever there is to discover.

That's asking us to look for what's prioritized - what the most important point of play is.  Is it really attending to "it", period?  That's Sim.  Though I think the "premise-load" issue is interesting and a bit more complex - I'll get back to that.

First, though, what do we call "it"?  The Dream, Exploration?  MJ throws in discovery, and I'll add creation, or invention - all possible descriptions.  All terms for a thing that G and N can be said to use in pursuit of their goals.  But only S sees it (under whatever name) in itself as the point of play (note - not "with no interest or emotion," or at least not as a requirement).  The relationship that S has with "it" is different than the relationship that G or N has with it - that's what defines S.  For some people, the experience of Exploration Squared (the Right to Dream) is profoundly different than the experience of Exploration (the Dream) on its' own - and for GNS, what we see when Exploration is Squared is very different from what we see when it serves G or N.

All Creative Agenda (G, N or S) are, in a way, about the relationship the people playing have with the act of play as a whole (and Jason, it is because I see them sharing this relationship that I see them as all the "same thing," rather than seeing S as something outside CA).  S is married, blood and bone, to the act of exploring the imagined environment as a creation (or as a voyage of discovery - which is more accurate is, I think, more a matter of opinion than something to determine through rigorous analysis).  Look at how these pieces go together - how neat!  How amazing!  How cool!  Let me add this - ah, see how it adds to the creation?  Who would have thought we could tinker with something so marvelous, and make it even better than it was before?  And there's more - we may never run out of things to discover in this incredible artifact of our joint imagining.

The problem Jason points to, of injecting theme into the imagined elements and therefore "just" exploring them but producing Nar play (which I'll say is equivalent to MJ's premise-loading), seems to ignore that CA is NOT about the imagined elements, it's about what you do with 'em.  WHAT you do with them, NOT just that you include them.  If what you do with 'em is CREATE theme (address Premise) as you play, and jazz on that as a group, you do Nar.  If you put "theme" in the elements-mix and jazz on it as a creation of the exploration in itself, you do Sim.  It is not that the theme is connected to addressing Premise that you are jazzing on, it is that it is connected to your Right to Dream.  Unless you DO jazz on adressing Premise - at which point you ARE doing Nar, even though you thought of it as nothing except introducing the explored elements into play.

To take an example (and yes examples are always a bit problematic) from John's Vinland game, and think about it from an S-standpoint: the insight about the size and type of living space due to the change in availability of timber.  How wonderful, say (in various ways) the people playing!  This means that visitors from Iceland are going to feel uncomfortable here.  Oh, their temper's may flare - things may get interesting in Vinland soon.  That detail might even have been introduced to support a thematic issue - the conflict of tradition with progress, say.  But in an S-Priority it drives the evolution of imagined events, rejoicing in the creation of more and more imagined space, simply because it is a joyous thing to do - including the issues around tradition and progress, as neat explorative elements.  Or (to allow for the more "scientific" approach referred to earlier in this thread) an intriguing exploration of the consequences of the imagined elements.

From a G-standpoint, perhaps this Dream-element now presents a challenge - oooh, a new morale factor is in the mix!  Native-born Vinlanders will be much more comfortable than those more used to Icelandic living conditions.  Perhaps this can be useful.  An N-angle would see this new creation as an opportunity for addressing Premise: wow, this will really help underline how different things are here - the question of tradition vs. progress is even more powerfully illuminated and RIGHT NOW, using that, we can look at that as an issue through the lens of play.  NOT as an element of the imagined world, but as an actual issue itself.

As far as I can tell, the people playing in the S-approach can still "learn" something about the issue itself.  I'm just saying that they aren't looking at it as such while they play.  By not seeing it as an issue itself, but rather "just" an element of the imagined world, they gain a purity of exploration that going Nar would of necessity lose.  Any "learn about the issue" payoff must explicitly be outside play.  Or if they do see it as such, and sacrifice that purity, they are doing Nar.  

The question is, what do you do with the Dream?  Use it (towards G or N), and you are not doing S.  Revel in it (where sure, in some sense "it" can include "theme") as a thing in itself, and you are doing S.  Which is not to say that G and N don't revel in it - but they don't revel in it as a thing in itself.  Nor must all G and N "stuff" be absent from S play - S play just isn't primarily concerned with them.

At least, that's how it looks to me.

Moving on to a bit of a side issue - I agree with Ron that it is quite natural for humans to use the Dream to pursue G or N, but I'm not so certain that rejecting that and enjoying the thing itself is something that must be learned.  S is not necessarily a behavior that needs to be acquired so much as it is what is "naturally" left when G and N are absent.

To which I supose you could say that we need to learn about rejecting G and N for them to be absent.  Or UNlearn our compulsion to persue them.  Chicken and the egg problem perhaps.  But stretching metaphors (applying GNS to the "root" action of imagining rather than applied imagining in an RPG), I'd guess that the Dream (in the simple sense of idle daydreaming) happens at a very early age, and it is only later that we learn to use it towards a goal.  Maybe if it wasn't useful for anything, it would not persist - but in our earliest experiences with the impulse behind the Dream, there was no priority, only the Dream itself.  As we learn, we become increasingly aware of priority, perhaps even realizing that we are incapable of operating without a priority - so we make the purity of the Dream a priority in and of itself.

And that's why Sim is simultaneously the MOST and LEAST "natural" of all the GNS modes.  Maybe.

Gordon

PS: I will add - explicitly injecting "theme" as an explored element, actually USING that injection as an element of play (as opposed to ignoring it and focusing on other elements), and then NOT doing Nar does strike me as a kinda unnatural act.  That probably doesn't happen very often - most of the time, if you clearly inject theme you will eventually end up doing Nar.  It's real work not to.  Of course, for lovers of that style of Dream, it's work that's well worth it.  On the other hand, maybe there are some folks who don't really care so much about Dream as an overarching priority to play, but they have been trained/trained themselves to think "I'm not supposed to really look at stuff outside the imagined environment."  For them, it's work that's entirely unnecessary.  That's where the personal preferences issues start, and they of course build from that.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

for GNS, what we see when Exploration is Squared is very different from what we see when it serves G or N.

My GNS essay in a nutshell. I agree, Gordon, with everything in your post. John, that also explains why I don't really understand how you see a contradiction in the first place. Jason, I hope that Gordon's phrasing works for you in terms of that "Nar without Nar" stuff you were talking about," because for the life of me I can't come up with a better explanation than his.  

Best,
Ron